A 15-year-old Long Island student has become the youngest person ever to receive a Ph.D. fellowship from the Pentagon.

Alia Sabur turned down a NASA fellowship in favor of a $150,000 Department of Defense fellowship, and picked a sophisticated project for the Pentagon.

“I’m developing a tool to trap atoms inside hollow beams of light,” she explains, using terms like optical tweezers and nano-photonics.

One of the more important applications of her project, she said, is an inexpensive, less invasive way of removing tumors.

Her idea could also be used in 3-D imaging and spectroscopy – and potentially in some technology right out of “Star Trek”

“Theoretically it could be used to transport things and even people,” she said.

The Northport girl entered Drexel University in January as the youngest Ph.D. student in the country.

Before heading back to Drexel this fall, she will spend part of the summer at Edwards Air Force Base in California doing research on preventing satellites from burning up when re-entering the atmosphere.

“What is unique about her is that she can do cutting-edge research and be a prodigy in both science and music,” said her mother, Julie Sabur.

Alia also enjoys the distinction of being the only teenage con- cert clarinetist to perform with the rock band Smash Mouth.

She was being honored earlier this month at a Washington museum fund-raiser, and Smash Mouth members, who were performing at the ceremony, invited her to join them on clarinet.

If all goes according to plan, Alia will have her doctorate in engineering by 2007 and begin teaching and doing more research.